Harry Turtledove enters the world of juvenile science fiction. Several reviewers on Amazon compared the books to Robert Heinlein’s young adult books (Have Spacesuit, Will Travel or Podkayne of Mars, perhaps) and there are some similarities, but while Heinlein’s books were about individual responsibility, Turtledove is more interested in larger society.


“Crosstime Traffic” is the name of the series; the individual books published so far are Gunpowder Empire, Curious Notions and In High Places. (I have not yet read the last one; it isn’t out in paperback yet and I don’t have the budget or shelf space for hardbound books).


The books are not sequels; they do not share the same characters. However, they do have the same premise; in the late 21st century a device allowing access to parallel universes enables our Earth to solve all its resource problems by going into alternate Earths and exploiting theirs. Thus the series title (which is the name of the organization that oversees this traffic) is a misnomer; there’s no time travel involved (thus avoiding the problem of changing history). The first novel is set in a Roman Empire that never fell (because Agrippa outlived Augustus, became emperor himself, and stabilized things) and that has progressed to the early gunpowder stage; the second takes place in a world where the Germans won the First World War (because the Schlieffen Plan worked), developed atomic weapons early (because there was no persecution of Jewish physicists) and conquered the world. The Crosstime Traffic entity (it’s never made clear if it’s a government agency or a private corporation) is exploiting these worlds by setting up small trading posts and swapping technology (Swiss army knives and pocket watches to the Romans, consumer electronics to the Germans) for - food.


Here’s where things go haywire for me. It’s made clear early in the first book that there are alternate worlds with no human population at all. Crosstime Traffic has entered those worlds and is busy drilling for oil. Well, why not farm them as well? Why go to all the trouble to send people - families, so you can get teenagers into the books - into dangerous environments just for wagonloads of grain from the alternate Roman empire and truckloads of produce from the alternate Second Reich? Paradoxically, it’s OK to suspend the laws of physics in science fiction - I have no beef with authors that have various armwaving excuses for things like faster-than-light travel or gravity polarizers - but it’s not OK to suspend the laws of logic. And none of the teenagers in these books ever ask their parents this embarrassingly obvious question.


Second, Turtledove has a bully pulpit that he refuses to preach from. The natives in the first book have a Late Medieval-Renaissance technology level, with all the disease, brutality and nastiness that go along with it; the natives in the second are oppressed by a dictatorial government. And the Crosstime Traffic people have the power to change that. This could raise all sorts of interesting - and obviously highly relevant - questions about the duties and obligations of technologically and politically advanced cultures to less advanced ones that might give teenage readers considerable room for thought. Maybe Turtledove expects them to ask those questions without any prompting from him; he does nibble around the edges a little. A Crosstime character in Gunpowder Empire frees a slave, and one in Curious Notions insists on rescuing a “local” family that saved him from the dreaded Feldgendarmie (like the GESTAPO, but with Pikelhauben), but the larger questions of principles aren’t addressed.


Maybe I should give Turtledove the benefit of the doubt here. This is a series, and I haven’t read the third novel yet, so perhaps he intends to pull young readers in with the adventure aspects of the stories and drop the philosophy on them gradually. ( )

This one's an okay book about a father and son who set up shop in an alternate reality where the Germans won the first World War. The authorities start to suspect them and things go from bad to worse. I got the book because I was curious how the Kaiser's America would compare to other alternate reality tales. It wasn't all that different from a What-If-the-Germans-Won-World-War-2 scenario. No Nazi trappings, of course, but otherwise very familiar.
--J. ( )

I really should be more selective in what I read or at least do more preparation. I read a few years ago Harry Turtledove's alternative sci-fi book Gladiator and liked it. I learned then that it was part of his "Crosstime Traffic" series, where people in one reality have the technology to move between alternative versions of Earth. Earlier this week I had a few minutes at the library, remembered this and picked up another volume from him, "Curious Notions." As it turned out, this was the second volume of his series, while the Gladiator was the fourth. Next time I really should get the first one, "Gunpowder Empire." Each volume stands on its own, with different characters and places, but still it would be good to know, whether there is any explanation or pre-history in the first one.

Curious Notions is a shop in the late 21st century, where people from our world are selling electronic gadgets in an alternative reality, where the Great War was one by the Germans and with the use of atomic bombs they concurred the USA as well. The proprietors of the shop have two mission: buy produce they can ship back to the home timeline and ensure that this reality doesn't develop its own transposition chambers, the device that carries people and objects between realities. Things go well, until the authorities start taking too much notice of the curious things they sell, that is not known anywhere else in that world....

I haven't been paying much attention in the past of the label "Young adult" literature. Looking at the long list of books that Turtledove wrote made me wonder why some is in that category and others are not. Reading this book made two requirement clear: the protagonists have to be teenagers themselves, so the reader can relate to them. Then the books should not have explicit scenes in it and apparently not even mild swearing. I noticed that every time Turtledove expressed somebody's anger, he went around using expletives, made it clear that they were used by the characters. The lack of four letter words from the appropriate situations didn't bother me, as I rarely use them myself. It was kind of part of establishing my identity as a teen, that unlike some people around me I consciously tried to eliminate using them. But it was funny in this book, how the author went at great length, to avoid them. Would have been simpler to include a few here and there.

The book's plot is simple to follow and even predict, but that doesn't take away the joy from the narrative. Turtledove made sure that the reader gets a horrifying picture of a totalitarian regime and a country under its rule. Let me give you an example: a German official telling to a really innocent Americna woman on page 47,
I will tell you how it seems to me. It seems like this. We have found no evidence,--ja, this is true. But does this mean you are not guilty? That I find very unlikely. So it must mean you are very clever. You think you have outwitted us. For the time being, you may even be right. We shall see, though, what further questioning of Herr Charles Woo will bring.
I enjoyed the simple fantasy of being transferred to a world, where Adolf Hitler never rose to power, despite the US and most of the world being under a German rule was still no fairy tale. Being safely separated from that world, by virtue of reading about it on a page, made me less anxious about whether our heroes in danger can get out. I don't think I will spoil much by telling you that they did. This probably means that the third requirement for a YA novel is to have a happy end. There, you have one here now.

The cross time trafic series is enjoyable and entertaining. Each giving a photograph view of what life could be like in an alternate history. This book gives this view as if Germany won WWI and domoniated the U.S. however, a negative is this book for me was very predictable due to first reading Gladiator another cross time book by Turtledove. This story is virtually the same story line as Gladiator but told in a different alternate history. ( )

A YA alternative history set in a world in which Germany had become the dominant power after the First World War.